Nick Lampson running for 14th Congressional District

Published 5:15 pm, Monday, December 19, 2011

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Nick Lampson

Nick Lampson

Photo: --Nick Lampson

Nick Lampson running for 14th Congressional District

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Nick's back.

"I am. I have sent in the filing papers, so that means I am in the race (for the 14th Congressional District)," said Former Rep. Nick Lampson, 66, who held the Ninth Congressional District for eight years before redistricting split it up, putting Jefferson County and part of Orange County into the Second District along with a substantial chunk of Houston's northern suburbs. Republican Ted Poe won the reconfigured Second District in 2004.

Also in the race are Beaumont attorneys Michael Truncale, 53, and Jay Old, 48, who both are running as Republicans, as well as a handful of other GOP contenders.

The latest round of redistricting hasn't quite played out yet, but Lampson, a Democrat, was confident enough that the newly drawn 14th District will remain relatively stable, containing somewhere between 80-85 percent of the former Ninth District, that he was willing to throw his hat in the ring.

Lampson acknowledged that the political landscape has changed since his time in the Ninth District, but he hoped he could bring back some bipartisanship to an increasingly polarized Congress.

"The culture we've created in Congress really and truly is about what can be done to keep control of your party in Congress," he said, adding that this tends to push elected officials to the far left and far right, "ticking off everyone in the middle and they don't want to go vote."

Lampson stressed the importance of compromise in "doing the business of the country."

"It's like a marriage," he said. "You have to be willing to give in on some things."

He cited his creation of a congressional caucus on missing and exploited children and a Center Aisle caucus he co-created that called for Republican members to bring in a Democratic partner and vice versa, as examples of his efforts at bipartisanship.